Eddie Hearn Explains Why Show Didn’t Draw Better (Part 2)

Next time, Eddie Hearn, the UK bossman in that sphere, yeah, he’d make some tweaks.

“I like to do things a little differently…The broadcasters as well have to trust me to do my quirky stuff,” he said Sunday morning, after his first American foray, at the Nassau Coliseum, on a frigid night on Long Island, noting maybe he should have pitched that earlier. “Tonight was really about learning, understanding, watching. It wasn’t a case of implementing things tonight, because we don’t know really what we’re doing it here. Tonight and this week has really been like our first ever boxing show again. Whereas, you turn up in Britain and it’s like boom boom, absolutely sold out everywhere, everyone’s bought a ticket, everyone’s screaming, shouting, atmosphere, it’s easy. It’s harder work here. It’s harder work because you haven’t developed the stars.”

He said that it isn’t brain surgery. When you have an event that has some buzz, a craving from the punters to watch it, then they turn up. “I feel like fans (in the US) aren’t necessarily going to watch individuals, rather than just going to a show…You’ve got to want to like Jarrell Miller, ‘oh, he’s a good guy, I’m going to go and support him, rather than just, ‘Oh, I’m to go to a show, I don’t really know who’s on there, I just know it’s a boxing show. If you ask a fan at a British show, they’ll be able to name you every single fighter on the card, and probably tell you about every single fighter on the card.”

Does race matter here? “Race is irrelevant, but country and background might not be,” Hearn said. He said Gennady Golovkin was built here, and him being so active was a large factor in his fanbase growing.

Hearn said it should be easy for a Deontay Wilder to be more buzz-y. Maybe more aid is needed from the networks and the mainstream media, Hearn stated, but “you only get help from the mainstream media when the sport is big enough…You can’t moan at the media, like promoters, oh we don’t get support from the media…then promote better shows! Make the sport bigger!”